Welcome Times Two

This is Chai, 

also known as Chai Fox Princess Pie* (want to guess which name was Jac’s idea??), who we are going to call Coco. 

 Making friends with Tachel

Rachel’s BFF in CO is moving and needed to rehome her cats. 

Addy suggested I take this sweet little girl and offered to bring Chai with her when she flew out to spend a month with us. 

Who could resist those pretty blue eyes?

 Clean bill of health at the vet

Coco is a 6-year old Snowshoe (a rare breed I’d never heard of) and weighs in at just under 9 pounds. She’s sweet, affectionate and has handled all the travel and disruption like a champ. 

Pet meeeeeeeee

She hid under the bed after today’s airplane ride but when I checked on her an hour later, she climbed right into my lap like we’re BFF’s. Such a sweetie.

 Helping Addy pack 

When Lily passed away two years ago, I said no more cats. Apparently the Cat Distribution Network had other ideas and I’m ok with that. 😍

* Addy wants to keep the name Chai. Leo suggested Pumpkin or Fox. Jac’s idea was Princess Pie. Leia said ‘it’s finals week!! I don’t knooooooooow.’ 😂

Working Backwards

One of my chores this week, in preparing for our new 4-legged resident, was to figure out which of my new plants are toxic to critters. 

Orchids? Non-toxic!

Turns out there’s a lot. It would be so much easier if we’d done this in reverse - get the critter and then the plants. But Addy didn’t make her successful pitch until the plant habitat was well established. 

My favorite Chinese Evergreens (Aglaonema)? Toxic. Amaryllis, anthurium, snake plant? All toxic. Out of the 20+ varieties I have, at least 8 are big no-no’s.

What to do? Two plants moved outside (amaryllis and Pothos) and several moved to the highest shelf. 

Matt gave me this (toxic!) Monstera Adansonii and I just finished repotting its root-bound little self, so I’d really like to keep it. It’s too heavy for the top shelf so we’re going to try blocking it off. Crossing fingers it works. (Pictures of the new critter tomorrow!)

Finally!

Teena and I FaceTimed back on April 12 to work on this month’s Winter Wonderland block. Teena finished hers that same day…

I got 3/4 of the way through mine and hated it decided it wasn’t living up to its potential. 😜

I prepped new pieces last week - it’s a good tv watching project - and sewed it up today. Much better. Pattern is ‘Baubles’ (here) by Full Bobbin Designs and included both the string and no-string versions. Love her patterns. 

Also, big changes are coming in… 5… 4… (Saturday. It’s happening Saturday.)

Steller’s Jay

Look at me, finishing the Birdwatchers Project pattern in the same month it was released. Haven’t done that since … October? 

This Steller’s Jay was less intricate than some (most?) of the bird patterns we’ve done. It was a fairly easy finish, with no major oopsies on my part. 

This is block #11 of 14, with only May’s Red-Shouldered Hawk and June’s Great Horned Owl - along with the Roseate Spoonbill I skipped over - left to do. So excited to be this close to done!

Another Finish

Way back in 2021, my pal Debbie and I made 4 (5?) National Parks quilts for the women in our crochet group. The plan for mine was to embroider around the block of each park hubby and I have been to together. 

Dark clouds but no rain for us.

We’ve used it on several of our trips and it’s been back-burnered often. I’d stitch a little here and there when I didn’t have another tv-watching project. Five years later, the 100 Days project has finally pushed it over the finish line.

 The embroidery is more noticeable in person.

At least until we visit another park…

Homeward

After spending yesterday eating, reading, snacking and napping (it was so nice!) today we headed home. We ‘accidentally’ managed to hit Carpinteria for lunch and as long as we were there….

The biggest and oldest Christmas cactus I’ve ever seen -so awesome - plus the 2” succulents that followed us home

Seaside Gardens (here) was our first stop. We’ve been there before - great selection, reasonable prices (much better than other stores in our area) and lots of pretty things to admire.

 Variegated snake plant

They didn’t have the thing I was looking for but we came away with a snake plant ⬆️, big ⬇️ and little cacti, plus a selection of planting pots. 

 The flowers on this Echveria will be orange! Can’t wait.

Gallop and Stribling Orchids, just down the road, was a big surprise. 

 Orchids everywhere 

I knew they had a plant and gift shop but didn’t realize they also had warehouse-size greenhouses packed full of orchids, with a nice sideline in succulents and air plants. 

 Bought more air plants and a piece of driftwood to display them.

Plus one of the largest orchid propagation labs in the US. 

It was amazing. 

We picked up a few things 

 How could we resist lime green orchids?

and if the orchids I already have survive, we’ll be going back for more!

 

Nature Walk

Pix from hubby’s morning walk through the Fiscalini Ranch Preserve. How many bees can you see?

Sunset on the beach.